Thursday, June 22, 2017

Rising Russian Approval of Stalin Reflects Passing of Generation that Experienced Him and Rise of One that Didn’t, Minkin Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, June 22 – The share of
Russians who approve the actions of Stalin during World War II has indeed risen
over the last decade but not simply because of Kremlin propaganda, Aleksandr
Minkin says. It also reflects the passing of an entire generation who knew what
he did and the rise of one for whom Stalin is only a distant historical figure.

In a Moskovsky komsomolets commentary, the Moscow journalist points out
that the share of Russians approving Stalin’s actions during the war rose from
40 percent in 2005 to 50 percent this year, according to Public Opinion
Foundation polls. But these are not the same Russians (mk.ru/politics/2017/06/21/lyubitelyam-stalina.html).

Between 2005 and
2016, Minkin points out, 24 million Russian citizens died, most of them older,
and were largely replaced by younger people. In addition, some five million
Russian citizens emigrated. Those who chose to leave were unlikely to have been
Stalin partisans; and those who died knew Stalin far better and more directly
than those who came after them.

“Of course,” he continues, “the atmosphere
as changed a little. People try to correctly answer pollsters’ questions in
order to avoid unpleasant consequences. Just imagine,” Minkin says, how a
Russian would respond to a query about Nicholas II in 1916 or one about
Khrushchev in 1956.ith

And “propaganda does work, both
direct and indirect. Try to count how often the name Stalin sounds alongside
the word ‘victory’ and how often next to the word ‘GULAG.’”The difference turns out to be hundreds or
thousands of times, especially for those who live with television.

It is “completely possible,” he
continues, that some Russians have changed their minds about Stalin, but that
is not the “main” explanation for the rising levels of approval for the late
dictator. Russians “have not so much changed their minds as died off,” Minkin
says.

“Twenty-four million dead is more
than 20 percent of adults. The old die and the new grow up. The former knew
about Stalin more than the current generation does,” and they haven’t forgotten
entirely what he did to them and their country. “They experienced it on their
own skin. They knew the war and not about the war. They saw more trenches than
parades.”

But Russians today, the commentator
says, “see only parades … and the fewer the witnesses there are, the easier it
is to make things up.”

Minkin writes that over the last two
months he has been asking young Russians about Stalin’s times. The majority don’t
know what Kolyma means. And one young Russian observed that Magadan is “a fish”
rather than the site of one of the most horrific Stalinist camps in the GULAG
system.”

Those who read Sharlamov’s Kolyma Stories would never give such an
answer, he argues, “but the percent of those who know this book is strikingly
fewer than it was at the end of the 1980s.”Those who read it haven’t forgotten it: “they have simply died off,” and
the generation that has come after them doesn’t know it at all.

Those who were GULAG guards, of
course, loved Stalin as a god just as do those who are their successors. And
today, Minkin says, “there are guards at each step … hundreds of thousands. And
we are world champions on this measure while paradoxically world champions in
thefts as well.”

It is true that many Russians want
to restore the harshness of Stalin, but they don’t want this “for themselves but
rather for corrupt bureaucrats. [They even] want to return the death penalty
but again hardly for themselves.”

And it is also true, the Moscow
commentator says, that many want to give the correct answer to any questions
because they are convinced that the powers can monitor everything they say,
even how they vote, and that the wrong answers can entail bad consequences.

“The phrase, ‘For the Motherland
without Stalin’ generates discomfort for [Russians. They] do not want to hear
or even more to repeat it,” Minkin concludes. “Because it can generate an
unbidden association with some stupid unsanctioned cries of the type ‘For
Russia without Putin.’”